tiful supply of false quantities; "Nam nos Britones non curamus quantitates syllabarum :”—

Hic jacet Erasmus, qui quondam bonus erat mus.
Rodere qui solitus, roditur a vermibus:

Some one attempted to improve it, by substituting for bonus, pravus; but his prosody reached no farther.

The following epigram contains a severe satire:

Hic jacet Ugo senex, sed qui prius inde recessit,
Quam scisset cur hoc esset in orbe satus.

The following is an epitaph on one Master Jean le Veau :

O Deus omnipotens Vituli miserere Joannis,
Quem mors præveniens non sinit esse bovem !

Marot has paraphrased it into eight lines. With a slight change, it has been applied to one Count Vitelli, killed in the civil wars of the Low Countries.

There was a Cordelier at Paris, by name, Pierre Cornu, or Corne, in Latin, Doctor de Cornibus. This person died at Paris in 1542, and was the subject of several epitaphs; among the number the following macaronic :

Faut-il hélas, O Doctor optime,
Que vous perdions hisce temporibus,
Au grand besoin, Doctor egregie,
Vous nous laissez plenos mororibus.

66

Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay," neither stopped a bung-hole, nor patched a wall : but he was put to nearly as base a use, when he became the subject of the following epitaph:

MISCELLANEOUS EPIGRAMS.

WHEN the pretensions of birth are not immoderately urged, the public are disposed to treat it with all due respect. On the other hand, persons of low origin, raised to a high station, if they give not themselves the airs of aboriginal aristocracy, if they shrink not from the remembrance of what they once were, will not be painfully reminded of it by others. Agathocles, king of the Syracusans, was entitled to much credit in that respect. The acts of tyranny committed by him were indeed atrocious; but somewhat of the censure attaching to his general character is softened, by his remembrance without shame, in his prosperous fortune, that he was the son of a potter. That the circumstance might never be absent from his mind, as well as in honour of his father's memory, and of his own origin, his side-board was set out with earthen dishes introduced among the gold and silver plate. Ausonius has made this the subject of an elegant epigram:

Fama est fictilibus cœnasse Agathoclea regem,
Atque abacum Samio sæpe onerasse luto.
Fercula gemmatis quum poneret horrida vasis;
Et misceret opes, pauperiemque simul:

Quærenti causam, respondit: Rex ego qui sum
Sicaniæ, figulo sum genitore satus.
Fortunam reverenter habe, quicunque repente
Dives ab exili progrediere loco.

Rabelais is elegantly complimented by Beza, in a celebrated epigram among his Juvenilia :

Qui sic nugatur, tractantem ut seria vincat,
Seria cum faciet, dic, rogo, quantus erit?

Barbers were brought to Rome from Sicily by Publius Ticinius Mena. For upwards of 400 years, the ancient Romans never shaved.

has an epigram on long beards:

Εἰ τὸ τρέφειν πώγωνα δοκεῖς σοφίαν περιποιεῖν,
Καὶ τράγος εὐπώγων εὔςοχος ἐςὶ Πλάτων.

Philo reasons thus on a foolish old age:

Αἱ γὰρ ἄτες νοῦ,

Μᾶλλον τῶν πολλῶν εἰσὶν ὄνειδος ἐτῶν·

Lucian

Massinger, in The Old Law, seems to have had his eye on Lucian's epigram, in the observations of a courtier on the Duke of Epire's proposed reformation:

It will have heats though, when they see the painting Go an inch deep i' the wrinkle, and take up

A box more than their gossips: but for men, my lord,

That should be the sole bravery of a palace,

To walk with hollow eyes and long white beards,
As if a prince dwelt in a land of goats;

With clothes as if they sat on their backs on purpose
To arraign a fashion, and condemn't to exile;
Their pockets in their sleeves, as if they laid
Their ear to avarice, and heard the devils whisper !
Now ours lie downward here close to the flank,
Right spending pockets, as a son's should be

That lives i' the fashion; where our diseased fathers,
Worried with the sciatica and aches,

Brought up your paned hose first, which ladies laugh'd at,
Giving no reverence to the place distrain'd:

They love a doublet that's three hours a buttoning,
And sits so close makes a man groan again,

And his soul mutter half a day; yet these are those
That carry sway and worth: prick'd up in clothes,
Why should we fear our rising?

The value of Martial is to the full as great to the classical antiquary, as to the searcher after wit. The following passage from one of the epigrams states the various uses of the Endromis :

Seu lentum ceroma teris, tepidumve trigona,
Sive harpasta manu pulverulenta rapis:
Plumea seu laxi partiris pondera follis:

Sive levem cursu vincere quæris Atham.
Ne madidos intret penetrabile frigus in artus,
Neve gravis subita te premat Iris aqua.
Ridebis ventos hoc munere tectus et imbres.
Lib. iv. epig. 19.

Wooden toothpicks, made of the lentisk, were preferred to quills by the Romans :

Lentiscum melius: sed si tibi frondea cuspis

Defuerit, dentes penna levare potest.

Lib. xiv. epig. 22.